Call of Duty: Black Ops II -- Revolution Content Breakdown

For Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 design director David Vonderhaar, the main creative idea driving the development of the Revolution DLC came down to one thing: diversity. With millions of people logging on to play competitive multiplayer and Zombies every day, Vonderhaar knows it’s up to the team at Treyarch to iterate enough on the experience to keep them hooked, and to make them feel like it’s worth the continued investment.

How well the developer’s succeeded will be judged by the engagement of fans, but after playing both the multiplayer maps and the new zombies content for a short time, we wanted to break down a bit of what you can expect.

Grind

This is not your typical Call of Duty level. Vonderhaar says the goal for Grind was to create a stage with an abundance of abnormal surfaces. Most Call of Duty maps take place in sections with tons of vertical walls, whereas the majority of Grind places you on curved ramps you can climb on top of. Not only does this present a ton of opportunities to get slight height advantages on your opponent, but it also changes the way you use grenades. Grenades bounce off walls in any map, sure, but in Grind you can roll explosives around curves, or watch them slowly rollback down an incline.

Grind feels a bit small, likely because ramps and other obstacles break sightlines. There’s a decently sized interior space, but it’s all very tight. Snipers will probably find themselves hard pressed to find a great position, especially since grenades are so effective. My guess? SMGs and assault rifles will rule the roost.

Downhill

It started out as simple as wanting to put a snow map into Black Ops 2. Seeing as how the core campaign never takes you to the snow, though, Treyarch had to put a lot of time into creating a lot of new art and character models. The result is Downhill, a map where one side puts you in short to medium range fights in the interior of a small snow lodge and cabin, while the other side gives long-range shooters a chance to pop off shots at anyone who dares come out from behind the limited safety of the large, snow-covered boulders.

Downhill doesn’t feel much different from what seasoned players have seen before, but it has one twist. Ski lifts constantly move through the lodge, and if they hit you dead on they’ll kill you outright (something I’m ashamed to admit happened to me several times). It makes fighting in the interior of the lodge particularly intense, especially on Demolition, where one of the bomb points spawns between the two lift paths.

Mirage

I absolutely love this map. It takes you to a small complex that’s been completely ravaged by a sandstorm. Sand and wind have destroyed rooftops, knocked open doors and created impromptu ramps to balconies and roof tops. Even the open terrain adds a bit of challenge; undulations due to small variations in sand build up mean that your aim is constantly bobbing. The sand also means there are a lot of small hills next to pieces of terrain, creating lots of defensible positions.

Mirage is also the biggest multiplayer map in Revolution. Ground War players wanted another map that felt like it was designed to support more than 12 players, and Mirage is Treyarch’s answer. Standard multiplayer still works here, though. Gigantic sand-covered streets lead you into an open pool area, and in objective based modes you’re often funneled to the big center structure. This building looks like it might have once been a hotel, but for game purposes it creates a place where short-ranged firefights occur, often between the many floors of the multi-tier lobby at once.

Hydro

If you’re the type that loves the spontaneity that Express’ speeding train brings to multiplayer, then you’ll like what Hydro has in store. The most symmetrical of Revolution’s multiplayer maps, Hydro is easy to understand within moments of hopping in.

Hydro breaks down into three lanes. One is mostly interior environments, taking you through two power generator rooms and an area of flowing water. The other two are all outside, but with broken sightlines thanks to parked cars, boxes and several smaller structures you can camp in.

The middle lane puts you at the most risk since you can easily be flanked by players coming from the other paths, but it also avoids Hydro’s floods. At seemingly random intervals the flood gates will open, water will rush in and anyone in the man-made river will be instantly killed. It effectively denies access to the outermost paths, and forces people to approach up the center or wait out the flood.

The Peacekeeper

This is a first for Treyarch. Though the team has put out a number of DLC packs, none of them ever had new guns – and it’s not simply a balance issue. According to Vonderhaar:

Tuning it’s actually easy…we know how to plug this gun into the mix. The hard part isn’t that stuff. The hard part is guns are so pervasive in everything. There’s camos. There’s special camos. There’s calling cards. There’s a combat record that has gun stats and you can compare that to other people. There are challenges. It’s all the systems around the weapons that are the complex bit.

The Peacekeeper.

Treyarch overcame those challenges, though, and the Peacekeeper’s about to be added to millions of players’ arsenals. It’s an SMG, but with a much better range than many of its counterparts. It also kicks like a mule if you fire it on full auto, so you’ll want to attach a stock to it or fire in bursts for greater effect. It’s naturally white finish makes it visually distinct, and, most importantly, it didn’t feel overpowered. It’ll feature its own set of challenges, and, as Vonderhaar indicated, will also have camos, calling cards and all the other bells and whistles that other weapons feature.

Die Rise

The name may induce an eye roll, but this new Zombies map feels very different from the rest of Black Ops 2. Instead of relatively open spaces, Die Rise places you in a crumbling skyscraper. It’s much more claustrophobic than Green Run, consisting almost entire of tight hallways, many of which have holes in them allowing zombies to attack from above. You can use the elevator to move around, though doing so can be…err…risky, and usually pieces of the building break in such a way that you can leap between sections.

Just like in Green Run, taking the time to learn the level will be paramount in Die Rise. Run around a corner too fast and you might fall to your death, and you’ll need to save your precious resources to purchase access to new parts of the world. A ton of parts are scattered about the building, though my team and I never managed to find a work bench.

On top of the undead legions, you’ll also face a deadly new minion. They look similar to the goblin-like enemies that lash out at you in the fog on Tranzit, only they come during specific waves, and can do short teleports around the environment. They go down really easily, but can pick off a survivor who strays out on their own with ease.

Turned

A lot of people dislike the time commitment of Zombies. Thus Treyarch’s created a new mode called Turned, a competitive mode where players take turns playing both zombies and survivors.

Play as a zombie in Turned.

Here’s how it works: four people hop into the Diner map, all of them spawning in as zombies. The first person to reach a syringe becomes the first survivor, with the others attempting to kill them. The zombies are much, much faster than what you fight in Tranzit, and can kill the survivor in one hit. The survivor starts with a revolver, but then, like Gun Game, unlocks new weapons with each kill. Playing the survivor earns you points, and the person with the most points in the end wins.

While I don’t see Turned becoming something legions of people sink hours into the way they do Tranzit, it worked as a nice palette cleanser. Games take less than 10 minutes, and everyone inevitably gets some time as the survivor because, well, surviving is hard. After you kill a zombie there’s a bit of downtime between bringing the next weapon to bear, and this almost always results in zombies getting the drop on you.

The biggest downer when it comes to Turned? It only works on the Diner map. Hopefully it’ll be expanded with future DLC, because for now it becomes repetitious after only a few rounds.

Want to learn more about the Revolution DLC? Check back with us early next week, when we’ll be posting video commentaries that show off the next big thing for Black Ops 2.

Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on @Chufmoney on Twitter and on at Ant-IGN on IGN.